President-elect Barack Obama is not wasting any time. He wants to hit
the ground running on Jan. 20 and is creating the President's
Economic Recovery Advisory Board to help. During his third news conference on
the economy in as many days, Obama said Wednesday the board will
be headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and work
outside the White House to provide "independent, nonpartisan
information, analysis and advice" to the government on economic recovery.
The president-elect says the board will be established for a two-year
term and will comprise experts from business, labor and
academia. Additional members will be announced at a later time.
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"Sometimes policy-making in Washington can become too insular," the
president-elect said. "The walls of the echo chamber can sometimes keep
out fresh voices and new ways of thinking -- and those who serve in
Washington don't always have a ground-level sense of which programs and
policies are working for people, and which aren't."
The new
board is modeled on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board set up by
President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 when, at the height of the Cold
War, the White House wanted views drawn from outside the established
bureaucracy. The intelligence advisers were chosen to be "candid and
unsparing in their assessment," Obama said, and the economic board
"will perform a similar function for my administration as we formulate
our economic policy."
Volcker is a former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. The advisory
board's staff director and chief economist will be Austan Goolsbee, a
University of Chicago professor and adviser to Obama since 2004. The
body will report to Obama, Vice president-elect Joe Biden and his economic
team.
The appointments were the latest additions to Obama's economic team
following his naming of Federal Reserve Bank of New York President
Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary, Larry Summers as chief White
House economic adviser and Peter Orszag as budget overseer. -
Donna Block
Donna Block is one of The Deal's senior Wall Street reporters.
